Читать книгу The Female Leader - Sonja Becker - Страница 5

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acqueline Kennedy Onassis was a bright child. When she was only four she went off on her own during a walk in Central Park with her newborn baby sister Lee and the nanny. When Jackie lost her way, the little girl was found by a policeman. When she saw him, she said self-assuredly, “My sister and my nanny seem to have gotten lost.”

When Jackie Kennedy moved into the White House at the side of her husband, she resolved to renovate the building and turn it into a grand house. Unfortunately, there was no money for the project.

The First Lady decided to finance it through her own resources. And she had an idea: she would introduce her own love of beauty, art and history and show children a living White House. The boys would experience history through all the things from other times that they got to see there. The girls should find it beautiful and lived-in, so there always had to be flowers there and a real fire burning in the grate. The White House should have a purpose, and that should be restored. And all the visitors and children should feel and see this purpose. Jackie resisted merely decorating, stressing the difference from restoration, and she wanted all the previous Presidents to be tangible. She herself loved the Lincoln Room, which contains all Lincoln’s effects, things that he had handled; and the atmosphere was similar to that of a cathedral, the same sense of peace and meditation. Sometimes Jackie would sit alone in the room, and could genuinely feel Lincoln’s strength, as if she was communicating with him. She had the greatest affinity with Jefferson, but it was Lincoln she loved.

Then she realized that about two million visitors walked through the White House annually. And they were ultimately the “cause” of the rapid wear and tear of the building. In any case, she didn’t charge an entry fee. Instead she produced an illustrated guide to the building, which visitors could purchase for a dollar.

It was obvious to her that every visitor would as a matter of course wish to take home this one dollar guide as a souvenir. Within a very short time the money for an extensive and lasting renovation was raised. With the assistance of the National Geographic Society, over eight million copies of the guide have been sold since 1962. Jackie Kennedy was the editor.